She is soo amazing .. she deserves her own blog

Disclaimer: Please do not compare your lover, spouse or significant other to the following blog, they will disappoint you and its not their fault .. she is one of a kind :)

So after a hot day at school I came home and checked my mail for bills / school info or any other equally unexciting piece of paper, but instead I found a green envelope with cute familiar writing :) My GGF (as my father refers to her) sent me a card for our one year and 3 month anniversary :) The card was a list of 10 things to do while we are apart with number 1 being something I do very well ... MISS HER :)

If that wasn't enough after going for a quick swim I got an email from the reception of our apartment complex to let me know that there was a parcel awaiting pickup :) So I knew it was my lovely girlfriend and I ran down to get it :) .. when I opened it I was soo happy :)

A picture of what my awesome GGF sent me ...

In the care package was an official big bang theory t-shirt of one of my favorite lines of the show :)  and a photo book which she put together herself with pictures from our trip to st-kitts and nevis, miami and NY!

Just a sample of how amazing the photo book is :)

Till the next update !

My first day at school and the blistering heat that accompanied it :)

Another very hot and humid day in Brisbane .. this time instead of being on the beach I was running between mostly canceled classes .. In engineering we have three types of courses.. Lectures, practicals and tutorials ... In the first week of uni all but the lectures are canceled lol but its a good idea to show up to the room just in case the prof is a keener :) 

Besides that we checked out the gym .. it was far too hot to train today so we just came home and did some swimming :)

Some sort of lizard we saw on campus

A view of the scenery on campus near the sports facilities

The great court, center of the campus

So far the courses seem good (although I have only had one lol) I should have have a better idea of the classes by the end of the week ! :)

Till the next update!

A valiant attempt to get to sunshine ...

Today is sunday .. which normally does not have the glamour of saturday .. nor the happiness of friday but its still better than lets say wednesday or tuesday lol .. Today however is our last day before we are supposed to get serious and start school :) which I assure has been our top priority since we landed overseas :P

Being that today is sunday .. we decided to go to the sunshine coast which is north of brisbane ... unfortunately when we go the train exchange (Roma St.) the next train headed to the sunshine coast was in 2 hours .. but the next surfer's paradise train was in 9 minutes.. so we went back to the surfer's paradise .. and It was just as beautiful as friday lol and as beautiful as my GGF (gorgeous girlfriend dubbed by my faja :)

It was hot and beautiful as usual in Brisbane (I know what a shame)

Surfer's paradise

If this was facebook I would tag my shadow :P

Blue bottle jelly fish

So while I was swimming I thought I got tangled in some hair or something but then it started to sting .. when I tried to remove is I noticed it was wrapped around both my arms and back ... it turned out to be a portuguese man of war aka a blue bottle jelly fish ... it wasn't very big and only stung for an hour or so but sure gave me a panic attack ! :) lifeguard said I would be fine .. turns out he was right :) Lucky roger was next to me in the water and he helped me get it off ! Thanks ROG!!! :)

Tomorrow if my first day of class .. I'm excited to start .. but more vacation is always nice :P .. Also I will sign up for the gym tomorrow with Rog and I am definitely excited about that !

Lunches packed, fresh fruits cut and bagged, sandwiches made and refrigerated .. so tomorrow should be a good day ..

Till the next update!

Groceries :)

A crucial part of living on your own is the fact that your spoiled butt is not gonna have food ready when you come home, or when your hungry or when you are too lazy to cut vegetables and.. you get the point ..

Luckily I have an awesome recipe book my sister put together with my family :) and practice from cooking with momma ;) ... Another thing about living on your own is that if you want to eat you have to cook but in order to cook you need groceries lol luckily we have two grocery stores one train ride away .. So for all of those who are worried about what I am eating here is today's grocery bill :)

Grocery Bill @ Coles

Till the next update !

Gold Coast :)

After over 3 weeks down under we finally made it to the beach ! Yesterday we went to the gold coast, 70 km of beautiful beaches and action.. we went to surfer's paradise the capital of the gold coast and the most commercial region.. The gold coast is much more than beaches .. it is one of Australia's biggest tourist zones and one the top ten largest agglomerations of population .. Its kinda like fort Lauderale meets miami with big high rises and hotels and a very happy go lucky party scene .. It took us two hours to get there and two hours to get back lol so we didn't spend too much time on the beach .. it is very wavy and the lifeguards isolate where people can swim as there is a very strong rip current that will drown even the best of swimmers..

All is all the beach is beautiful :) like my gf Diana (more stuff for you to read pops :P )

By the time we made it back to our flat we were exhausted and crashed out watching transformers lol

One of the gold coast's tallest buildings

A picture I took while laying on the beach

The entrance to the main part of the surfer's paradise beach

South Brisbane, the brown water is due to the floods

Also I am happy to hear my aunt, uncle and cousin made it on their vacation ok despite the 40 cm of snow my dad was telling me he shoveled !!! :)

Till the next update!

Haircut and the City

So today I got my first haricut in brisbane :) The guy who cut it was named Amir and he was Lebanese and remind me of Chadi .. most likely because he was Lebanese and cut hair really well :)

I don't know why youtube turned a 13 second movie into 1:03 but just fastforward it .. I just rotate around lol nothing too exciting :P



We also went to the city .. its pretty busy .. much busier than our small suburb .. we had lunch at a place called nando's its a very good potuguese grilled chicken place with special spices from India :)

Living with Roger has built up my spice immunity .. We ordered extra hot and I still added more hot sauce :) mom will be happy when I come back home :)

The city has a huge promenade with the street riding un-noticeably underneath it .. leaving plenty of space from people to walk around shop, have drinks or go for a bite to eat ... most of the malls have large open entrances, same with some of the shops .. its obvious they don't have to cope with harsh winters lol

Almost forgot to mention ... I opened up a bank account with wespac :) No my love I am not taking off my select plan with TD (which was awesome so far btw I have been doing all kinds of transactions) :P I simply need a aussie account to do automatic withdrawals for my gym membership at the school .. for some reason that the only way you can pay the membership .. but they guy who helped me was awesome and he even opened me up a savings account at 5% .. although I have no money to put in the savings account it nice to have in case .. :P

Till the next update!

Blogging is fun :)

You may notice a few new additions to the blog.. namely the facebook like button I have added next to my posts.. so if you have a facebook account you can like my posts and the activity of you "like" travelsofanerd.blogspot.com will appear on you facebook news feed :)

As you can see I have lots of time on my hands :)

Also I spoke with the director for incoming exchange students and he was looking for a few bloggers to write about their experience as an exchange student .. so I offered him to link to my blog from the university website...

Till the next update !

Here is another video from the NZ trip :)

Market Day :)

Today I went to the Uni for market day ! It is a day meant for all the different societies, groups, and sports teams to come out and give out pamphlets and recruit members ... Me and roger picked up a bunch of different stuff but joined the robogals which is the unofficial mechatronics society at the uni... The group teaches members to build electronic robots and then eventually the members will go out to highschools to entice more students (particularly girls hence roboGALS) to join the engineering faculty..

We also joined the student society for economics or something like that .. they seemed like they knew how to party so we joined :) and finally we joined the student society for exchange students because this will probably be a good way to meet people in the same position as us...

Overall there were many students and it was very impressive ! seems like aussies really like sports and socializing :)

Also .. since we essentially don't have any school till monday we were thinking about going to melbourne but it is too last minute and we have decided against it .. we will have some days free towards the end of the semester to go :)

Here is just a beautiful scene from my NZ trip :)

The beauty that is New Zealand ...

On a tragic note ...

The beautiful city of Christchurch was hit by another devastating earthquake ... it breaks my heart to here this news and my best wishes go out to all of those affected by the earthquake .. I spend two nights in Christchurch no more than a week ago and I can't believe the news I am seeing on the TV ...

This is trully devastating and saddens me deeply ...

Till the next update ...

The rescue :)

It is hard to remember everything you want to blog about when your blogging .. hence this blog about a
rescue me and Roger performed when kayaking through the rapids in queenstown..

Roger and I were often in the back of the group because we were taking pictures and videos .. as we were cruising down the river we saw a girl floating in the water .. so we banked our kayak on the first island we saw and got off.. she was unfortunately an island away and she could not cross between because the current was too strong... So we devised a plan to save them :) we took our kayak at laid it the length between the two islands and then I held the kayak as roger went out to grab the girl ! they both jumped in the kayak as I pulled them in ... We saved the day ! :)

On another note here is a video of DOLPHINS :)
I took it while we were in milfred sound on the overnight cruise :) 

Thunderstorms and orientation ...

Yesterday I witnessed my first day of rain in Brisbane :) and it could not have come at a better time ! We were experiencing a record high weekend of 40 degrees ! The rain came like torrential downpour! Within 20 minutes the sky went from a beautiful sunny super hot day to dark and storm clouds and 5 minutes later it poured more rain that I had ever seen before ! Roger and I were running around campus getting our student ID cards made when it started and we got soaked !! :) but it was a refreshing change !

Besides the rain we had our first day of orientation :) It was fun we made some new friends, explored the campus and are excited to start studying next week :) Tomorrow is market day where all of the different societies, sports clubs and even the transit system set up booths to inform students of what is happening on campus! I figure joining a sports team will help with making new friends so I will see if there is anything I'm good at and join lol

Then last night we made dinner :) we are really starting to get the hang of it, we made sausages on the grill and potatoes in the oven with peas :)

Till the next update

Here is a video of me on the helicopter in our way to the glacier :)

Hottest weekends on record..

Brisbane and most of the south east section of queensland had one of its hottest weekends on record... and I know everyone from Montreal is saying: "boo hoo, we are freezing and getting clobbered with snow" haha but my AC sucks and so its very very hot .. luckily the temperature will come down tomorrow :)

Having been away from home for 3 weeks now I can easily say and with confidence that I appreciate my family and especially my mom that much more now ... Cleaning, cooking, laundry and other random responsibilities are tough to handle all at once ! and I don't know how my parents do it and work full time and deal with things like their son and daughter's traveling ambitions lol

I can also say with confidence that Montreal is one of the best cities in the world! For one thing the water here sucks (but NZ's was good) ! 2nd the internet is 5 yrs behind and I haven't got a solid connection since I left home ! 

Tomorrow is our first official day of orientation :) we have a complete say booked with Tuesday looking the same :) wednesday -> friday look pretty empty so far so if its nice weather maybe we will hit the coast ;)

On a final note I can also say with great confidence that I love Diana Dello Russo :) (just thought i would add that in for those who DIS-like our facebook expressions of love :P )

Till the next update !

Here the my youtube video of a kangaroo :)

Last day in Sydney !

For our last day we distinctively set our schedule in order to ensure not missing our flight home lol

We decided to visit manly beach, manly oceanworld aquarium and then slowly make our way back to our hotel to pick up our bags and head down to the airport via train ...

Manly is quite beautiful, kind of looks like south beach with the art deco feel.. we didn't swim but I soaked my feet in the water and it was nice... Sydney was hot.. so beach and water was much appreciated.. we then walked up and down the main promenade and had a bite to eat followed by a nice ice cream :)

Oceanworld was also nice .. very much like the Sydney aquarium

Seahorses!

For my princess :)

Me and Roger on the Sydney harbor bridge, there we met a woman traveling from China and I spoke to her in Mandarin and told her all about my amazing gheghe (sister) who is Chinese :)

Manly Beach

The buildings on the beachfront

That is in a nut shell my trip to NZ and Sydney :) more pictures and videos will follow in subsequent blogs but this should keep my followers more or less up to date with everything that happened in the 12 days I was gallivanting down under ;)

Till the next update!

What you have been waiting for ...

I know most of you, since the day I left Montreal, have been waiting for pictures of koalas, kangoroos, and other strange creatures :).  On our second day in Sydney we went to the Sydney wildlife center, Sydney aquarium and the Sydney tower...

View from the Sydney tower

Small long nose crocodile

Koalas!!!!

Kangaroos!!!

Deadliest bird !

Rex, one of the largest crocodiles in captivity, he has few battle scars ie. badass!

Nurse shark

One of the world's deadliest snakes, Inland Taipan

Get ready Sydney !

On our first night in sydney we were already exhausted .. Contiki is known to be a trip where every night is a saturday night but every morning is a monday morning ! That sums it up about right.. so we basically crashed out on our first night but still managed to get in a little stroll to the sydney tower and around our hotel :)

The next morning Hang and Alan called to inform us of the days plans: Meet at the harbour side mall, head to the casino for an amazing lunch ! gamble a few dollars where we ended up winning :) walk around darling harbour, then take a ferry to circular quay to see the sydney opera house and the sydney harbour bridge :) from there we walked back to our hotel stopping along the way for a happy hour at a terrace outside.

Titanic :)

Sydney harbor bridge

Delicious buffet style lunch at the Sydney casino

In front of the Sydney opera house

The iconic Sydney opera house

One of many happy hours we had been to over the last week

Back to Christchurch

We did the last coach bus tour we were going to do on this trip.... heading back to Christchurch for a final nights rest until we all split up and took our separate planes home.  We had a final supper at a thai resto called thai samurai which was very good and then headed off to our own accomodations...  Goodbyes are always tough but for me and Roger we would see a few of the people from the tour in sydney and maybe a few more while we are in OZ... Our flight was at 7 am which meant we had to be up by 3:30 .. we set three alarms including a wake up call and two cell phone alarms.. but to no avail .. we missed our flight and woke up at 6:30 .. so we took a shuttle over the the airport and tried to book another flight... Air New Zealand was offering us a ticket on the next flight for and extra $381NZ but we instead found a flight with Emirates for less than $200 and book that one with the hope we can salvage the money from air new zealand when my lovely gf comes to see me :)

Roger booking our tickets with Emirates

The food served on Emirates: duck, lamb, cheesecake etc... FLY EMIRATES!

The flight with Emirates was absolutely amazing, service was awesome, food impeccable and 3 1/2 hours passed tooo fast !

Ironically enough missing our flight led us to taking the plane to OZ with two friends we had made in NZ (Hang and Alan) and they not only would take care of us over the next few days but they also drove us to our hotel and gave us the low down on sydney ! :)

Till the next update!

After the sound came the noise..

So when we got back to dry land we jumped on the coach and headed to lake ohau ... on the way we stopped at a marvelous fruit market and to pan for gold in the river :)

It was nearing valentines so I took this picture for my gorgeous gf :)

Didn't find any gold :(

Awesome fruits at the market !

The view from the porch of our hotel at lake Ohau

Me and Roger in front of Lake Ohau

A short "try for results" stop, thats NZ tallest mountain in the backgorund (Mt. Cook)

Lake Ohau was our last night as a group so we all got dressed in togas and partied the night away :)

Breathtaking...

After having our breath taken away from adrenaline rushing activities like sky diving and bungy jumping we set sails for milfred sound and fiordland :)

General knowledge : A sound is a v-shaped pattern carved out by a running river, a fiord is a u-shaped pattern carved out by a moving glacier.. milfred is actually a fiord.. either way we showed up to fiordland (a national heritage park) and we got on an overnight cruse into milfred sound :) .. the following pictures are the consequence ...

On our journey we also saw fur seals, dolphins and penguins :) but I have only video recorded those :) The night we stayed in the sound we kayaked and played board games all together with the other passengers :) 

Extreme #3

Today is our last day in Queenstown but our stay would not be complete if not for BUNGY JUMPINGG :)

 

 

Mentally a challenge to throw yourself off a bridge ...

Right before I jumped the guys asked if I was a TO fan because they were from Toronto haha

This is afterall the city it started in ;) and we actually jumped off the bridge it started on !

This was almost as scary as sky diving .. here you actually had to throw yourself off the bridge unlike skydiving where you had no choice lol   This was another awesome thrill and a great way to end our stay in queenstown! You get a free t-shirt after successfully jumping and me and Roger wear it proudly !!!

Next stop Milfred Sound and Fiordland!!

Till the next update!

Extreme #2

Two words.... SKY DIVING :)

The plane me and Roger jumped out of :)

 There is something that happens to your body when you jump out of a plane and the only thing that holds you between life and death is a chute and a guy named Ted from Connecticut whose been pulling your leg all morning about how he's hungover from a late night last night and he hopes he packed the chute properly :)

My face after jumping out of a plane

 As you can see the rush was awesome and simply nothing you can explain in words.. it felt as if all the synapses in my brain were firing at once but my body could not move ... it was overwhelming, petrifying and absolutely AWESOMEE :)

Eating our victory fergburger burgers :)

 These burgers were huge !! :)

Luging down the mountain :)

They do a luge down the mountain side .. it was fun but not a thrill after skydiving :)

When they said Queenstown was extreme they weren't kidding ... still one day left I wonder what tomorrow will bring ..

Till the next update!